Covenant Eyes for Android: 2.0.2 Release Preview

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- chad

Okay Folks,

I wanted to try something a little different here, so we are going on an experiment. We have an Android release coming in the next couple weeks (assuming all goes well) and I wanted to take a moment to cover the important details.

What this is: A place to discuss the upcoming features of this next Android release and to answer any questions about what it means

What this isn't: A place to bring in a big 5 gallon jug of hate-O-rade against any features that have not been included in this release.

Assuming this experiment goes well, I plan to try and preview all releases for all platforms eventually here.

Essentially now you can use any of these applications (regardless of which is the default on your device) and Covenant Eyes is going to be able to report on them. Videos from the YouTube app will all currently report as youtube.com but the actual title of the video will be in the detailed browsing log. This list is not final, and more apps will be added to be monitored over time.

We offer some monitoring on the Twitter App

There are some compatibility issues with older versions of Android and the Twitter app. If you are on Android 4.3 and higher we also added monitoring for Twitter.

This update now sets the minimum Android version requirement to 4.0

People on versions lower than 4.0 will still be able to use the current version of the app. We were unable to reduce the system requirements any lower than 4.0. Here is a neat link that shows what Android version is which http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

We would love to hear your feedback on both the app, and release previews in general.

I'm sorry it has been this much of a hassle for you. Let me see if I can put you in touch with someone in our Customer Service Team, I feel like this may be much more simple to solve in direct communication. Can you tell me what your Covenant Eyes username is?

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for doing this. I was getting close to completely uninstalling all browsers/internet from my phone - I'd previously uninstalled Chrome and all other browsers to use AOSP, but then I found that Incognito in that was a huge hole and AOSP shouldn't be used anyway because it is compromised (http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/major-aosp-browser-flaw-could-compromise-nearly-half-of-all-...) and I realized this morning I need the browser to do some tasks on the phone so removing everything wasn't even an option and all the other "Safe" or "Filtered" browsers all had huge obvious holes - this is so much better :).I am very glad to have this and very glad to test it. I confirmed today it definitely does show tracking in both Chrome with and without Incognito on my Kit Kat LG Optimus G Phone.

One hole I did find is it does not work on "Safe Browser" (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cloudacl&hl=en) which I understand since it is not stated as compatible. It would be good to add support for that browser and others if possible - that browser in particular blocks some things but it claims to enforce Safe Search but does not and so displays many inappropriate results in searches - it'd be great if those were tracked. I know this is not something for any time soon, but letting you know for future.

A few hours after this, reporting on Android for all browsers and modes seems to have stopped. I got a message at some point that "Covenant Eyes has stopped." I checked and the eye was still there and it seemed to still be working, and I would get popup notifications when I went to a webpage that it had been loaded. However when I checked the detailed browsing history on covenanteyes.com three was no record.

So i had no record of any web browsing on Android from a few hours after install until now. However, I signed in and out of Covenant Eyes (and saw no change) but then I reinstalled the same version again 2.0.1.22 (still latest as of today), without uninstalling, and lots of pages I had visited suddenly appeared in my browsing history even going back days.

So that's good - it suggests something had stopped it from working but it had been recording and sent when I logged back in. However, incognito mode pages still did not appear. But after the re-install pages visited now do appear.

Also, it feels like on Android sometimes the google search pages do not appear at all, while clicking any result does.

Excellent feedback, thanks. The new system is a little bit unstable (hence why we have not actually released it fully yet) but work is done on it almost every day. Thanks for all of your help and participation

I have been tracking this with much interest as I really need it to work. Is it going to monitor twitter profiles? I thought I read that somewhere that it monitors the profiles viewed in the official Twitter app, but it just showed time spent which is not as useful. Also, it shows use of the Opera app but not for as long as I used it for and some days are missed out. I also regularly get the dialogue box saying that CE has stopped and I click OK. I use a Google Asus Nexus 7 tablet. Thanks for all your work. What is the latest on development progress, and how soon are we going to be able to have it live?

I updated to the newest beta and it worked great for one day. That was the 21 of September. Now, it's only logging facebook and Twitter perfectly! Which I think is a great addition to the monitoring service. It is also logging app activity great! But, no internet activity at all is being logged.

I have a question about the newest version 2.0.1.29. I'm having issues not being able to see times in the detailed browsing log. It only shows 11:45PM- 12:00AM and 12:00 AM- 12:15AM. I called customer service and they couldn't help me. It will let me see my detailed browsing log but this only happens when I try to view the other user. It will let me view the accountability log up to date though. Any help is appreciated.

So I feel like I am missing something as well. Adam states there is a 3.x version, but it's not shown on the download page listed above. Do we need to contact CE directly to get this version? Also, how stable is it? I definitely prefer Chrome to the stock browser, but have uninstalled until CE can monitor it. Further, I don't really want to install a test version where my accountability partners won't be getting accurate information. Thanks.

Thanks for that info, I checked a few minutes ago and it wasn't there - I hit refresh on my computer and it popped up now - not sure if it was a caching issue but it wasn't there yesterday on my newly hard reset phone so I think it's new - awesome :)

I wanted to reply that with 2.9.9.x I'm very happy that I am not able to access HTTPS sites on the phone (with the previous versions I was getting proxy errors in such cases). I am unhappy though to report I have a lot of connection issues with the software though.

I was given an S4 a couple of weeks ago, I installed CV right away and then found that every time I booted up the phone, it would work fine to access the internet for some time, but then it would just stop. My Skype messages would not send (remaining in Pending state), my Google map traffic would not update, weather would not refresh and web pages would not load.

I thought it was the phone so I did a hard reset on it. I then waited a few days before installing CV to try to isolate the cause - everything was stable. So I installed 2.9.9.6 on the Sunday night and then upgraded to 2.9.9.8 on Monday morning, but again by Monday night I was having the same sort of issues and by Tuesday night I was restarting the phone every few minutes, even disconnecting the CV VPN and restarting or re-installing CV all together trying to bring the connection back. The VPN said it was connected but data had just stopped flowing though it in any other app.I cleared the cache but it was only 24kb and it didn't appear to have any effect.

I'd be happy to try other things to try to work around this, or I can give more information or test different things - I'd really like the software to work.

In the future if you could post in this thread for 2.9.9.x feedback that would be great.

Now onto the feedback. Network stability is something that is tricky for us to manage (hence why this is still beta). What we are looking to understand is what causes the VPN to want to stop working, and if there are any distinct patters that arise. For instance, we have noticed that switching networks can cause the VPN to stutter, which is odd. If you can tell us the circumstances that caused your trouble, it helps us narrow in on fixing the current issues.

We are really excited for this update, but it is a ton of work and polishing it will take some time. Check back soon and we should have another update that may continue to improve stability